The moment of a man's reward is sweet.
Yet he took it humbly, bending to kiss the small, upturned face with a reverence which no woman had ever inspired in him before.
And she smiled into his eyes with a frank avowal of love returned, unmarred by any veiled doubt.
In times less perilous he might have found his wooing as long by months as it had been short by days. But fear and danger had swept aside the hundred and one conventions which clustered burr-like around a demoiselle of the old school.
And Gabrielle?
She, too, had her lover, the lover she had chosen from childhood, her loyal knight for ever and ever.
Thus she had claimed and held him.
They belonged to each other, these two. She did not even question so old a fact. And her fears for him made her kinder even than she might have been, for Gabrielle was more woman than babe, and not averse—at times—to the kindling of jealous flame for the sake of listening to fresh vows of love.
But this was no time for jest. Love in such garb as theirs was too sacred a thing for sport or coquetry, though she could smile as she looked up at him.
"We are safe now," she whispered contentedly. "But, oh, Michael, I feared it was Lord Denningham."